May 1, 2019

"Camille Paglia should be removed from UArts faculty and replaced by a queer person of color... If, due to tenure, it is absolutely illegal to remove her, then..."

"... the University must at least offer alternate sections of the classes she teaches, instead taught by professors who respect transgender students and survivors of sexual assault.” Regardless, the students behind the petition want her banned from holding speaking events or selling books on campus. In their telling, her ideas 'are not merely "controversial," they are dangerous.'"

From a student petition at he University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where Camille Paglia has taught for decades, quoted in "Camille Paglia Can’t Say That/Art students are trying to get the social critic fired from a job she has held for three decades" by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic. Friedersdorf is very supportive of Paglia and critical of the students. Excerpt:
Th[e] argument—a speaker is responsible for harms that are theoretical, indirect, and so diffuse as to encompass actions of strangers who put themselves on the same side of a controversy — is untenable. Suppressing speech because it might indirectly cause danger depending on how people other than the speaker may react is an authoritarian move. And this approach to speech, applied consistently, would of course impede the actions of the anti-Paglia protesters as well.

177 comments:

Wince said...

"If, due to tenure, it is absolutely illegal to remove her, then..."

they could aways burn her at the stake.

Unknown said...

That creaking sound you hear are the tumbrels being prepared for those not sufficiently "woke" enough for our current times.

Not Sure said...

her ideas 'are not merely "controversial," they are dangerous.'"

Seems like only yesterday that would've been considered a rave review in the NY Review of Books.

rhhardin said...

Wm. Kerrigan wondered not about what Paglia wrote, which he agreed with, but that Yale University Press published it.

Sebastian said...

"Suppressing speech because it might indirectly cause danger depending on how people other than the speaker may react is an authoritarian move."

Umm, yeah. The left doing its lefty thing. Since 1789. So?

"And this approach to speech, applied consistently, would of course impede the actions of the anti-Paglia protesters as well."

Umm, no. "Applied consistently": it is to laugh. Authoritarian moves are made by people who assume authority. Progs rule, so the students' assumption is not crazy.

rhhardin said...

Kerrigan also said that Paglia badly needed an editor.

Mike Sylwester said...

In the old days, each college had a so-called Dean of Students, who disciplined students.

If a student were treating a professor contemptuously, then that student would be summoned for a talk by the Dean of Students. There, the student would be warned to cease the misbehavior immediately. If the student continued to treat the professor contemptuously, then the Dean of Students would suspend or expel the student.

Leland said...

It's funny how long these people used terms like Homophobia and Transphobia, when nobody showed or expressed fear. Now they admit fear and claim someone dangerous. They should see someone for their phobia.

Ryan said...

Why don't the students just go to a different school?

Megthered said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mike Sylwester said...

I love the expression cry-bully.

Nonapod said...

I've heard that neurological development in humans may continue until the age of 25. If so, perhaps we shouldn't give so much weight to the opinions of people under the age of 25 since their brains haven't finished forming? Maybe we should raise the voting age to 25.

rhhardin said...

I bet a lot of the motive comes from blacks not being able to follow Paglia's intellectual work. Hence the demand for a black professor.

Outcome-based professor rules.

Fernandinande said...

Cancel Culture Comes for Counterculture Comics
"Today it's creators, not cops, who want to banish R. Crumb, onetime king of the comics underground."

Murph said...

Th[e] argument—a speaker is responsible for harms that are theoretical, indirect, and so diffuse as to encompass actions of strangers who put themselves on the same side of a controversy — is untenable.

That should not need to be said in a free country. But the U.S. now fails Sharansky's "public square" test of freedom. Respectable persons have lost employment, reputation, and professional status because of just that: imputing strangers' actions to something someone once said. ...or, for another example, that someone once "endorsed" some political figure. ...like a David Duke with Trump. Or an Avenatti with Biden.

If the universities will not hold fast against the student mob, or companies against those who wish to destroy some person's employment, then it will be thrust upon the ordinary people, the "deplorables," if you will, to stand firm in the cause of the freedom to speak one's thoughts. We need to see the end of these infantile mini-tyrannies.

Fernandinande said...

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words make me go crazy.

gspencer said...

"And that no man [or woman] might buy or sell,[*] save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name."

*In context, meaning the carrying on of commerce which would include having employment

sean said...

Conor Friedersdorf is such an idiot. Just two years ago he was predicting that by now, people would be afraid to criticize President Trump because of his administration's speech suppression policies. Instead, the hysteria and inanity of people like him has enabled speech suppression a thousand times worse from those on the left. If Friedersdorf ended up in the gulag with the other Trotskyists, it would be poetic justice.

Earnest Prole said...

“Camille Paglia identifies as transgender” — that I did not know. The rest of the piece is generic anti-culture militancy.

chickelit said...

Camille Paglia should be removed from UArts faculty and replaced by a queer person of color

Anti-Trump forces say as much:

Donald Trump should be removed from the Presidency and replaced by a queer person, preferably one of color.

tim in vermont said...

Maybe we should raise the voting age to 25.

Yep. Plus the age to consent to a tattoo.

buwaya said...

This sort of thing, the censorship and mind-control, is ubiquitous all over American higher education. Indeed, the normal case is that "offense" never happens at all, because speech and ideas are pre-censored by the selection of faculty that would not think of being controversial, in their context, or because they are duly fearful.

Most of these people aren't Paglias, celebrities with great reputations from a more "liberal" time.

Paglia has that sort of armor, but there are very few Paglias.

This all goes back to what I think is your greatest problem, the death of the American mind. Your higher education is in a disastrous state, your intellectial class is completely depraved. Dismiss this all you like, but my opinion is that this disease will be fatal. And I don't see even a hint of an effort to control it, much less reverse it.

Ken B said...

Aren’t these students creating a hostile work environment?

RNB said...

"Camille Paglia turned me into a newt!"

wendybar said...

First they come for the...….. (insert whatever lefties are upset over today)
Be careful what you wish for.

Francisco D said...

I've heard that neurological development in humans may continue until the age of 25.

That is why auto insurance rates go down when a person hits 26. The prefrontal cortex regulates impulsivity and allows people to make better judgments.

rhhardin said...

Paglia's strength on sexuality is a fairly accurate account of other sexes.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Behold: The modern leftist fascist speech police.

Camille thinks for herself, and that is not allowed.

Freder Frederson said...

If a student were treating a professor contemptuously, then that student would be summoned for a talk by the Dean of Students. There, the student would be warned to cease the misbehavior immediately. If the student continued to treat the professor contemptuously, then the Dean of Students would suspend or expel the student.

Well Gee! That is a rousing example of the protecting the free speech rights of students.

We need to see the end of these infantile mini-tyrannies.

You mean like blackballing the Dixie Chicks for objecting to the Iraq war? Or backlash against Willie Nelson, Charlie Robison or Hayes Carl for supporting Beto O'Rourke for Senate?

To pretend the left is the only group that doesn't always believe in the "public square" test of freedom is patently ridiculous.

Anonymous said...

Suppressing speech because it might indirectly cause danger depending on how people other than the speaker may react is an authoritarian move.

In a sane world this observation would be filed under "no shit, Sherlock", and belaboring such a truism would not be considered worth publishing in what are supposed to be middle- or high-brow opinion journals.

That this has to be pointed out to anyone is disturbing. That the people for whom this needs to be pointed out still won't get it after any amount of careful explication is downright scary.

Ken B said...

This, to me, is the Left in a nutshell. It is rabidly anti-intellectual, despite leftists always preening they are the educated, smart ones. It is groupthink. It is organized piety. (I f*cking hate piety.) it is mob bullying.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

The left eat their own. They will bulldoze YOU next.

tim in vermont said...

Nietzsche talked about the “will to power,” and he talked about “slave moralities” but I don’t think he ever mentioned, and this appears to have been a huge oversight, the “will to enslavement,” because it seems like this generation has it in a big way.

tcrosse said...

Philadelphia, cradle of liberty.
First they came for Kate Smith.

n.n said...

Assuming there is intellectual tolerance, the conflict can only be about diversity or color quotas. Paglia is transgender/homosexual, but her character and ideology are not determined by her sexual orientation, and are apparently incompatible with social progress.

buwaya said...

This is all the same process Allan Bloom wrote about in 1987.

However the situation is now vastly worse.

The US has been skating along depending on the old-time intellectual habits of those who were formed in better days. But these people are aging out, and their replacements aren't up to their standard. And the quality of those in the pipeline, of the replacements of the replacements, is completely dreadful.

JPS said...

In the article, Friedersdorf quotes the petition:

“Paglia has been teaching at UArts for many years, and has only become more controversial over time.”

The authors apparently intend that as a criticism.

"During meetings with the committee, professors denounced the work as ‘trash’ and compared it to Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf,’” the Hartford Courant reported.

Oh wow. If a leftist professor is comparing someone's work to "Mein Kampf," it must be extraordinarily offensive. I know a few, they would never cheapen that comparison by slinging it around lazily.

I was doing some cutting and pasting and commenting on UArts President David Yager, who does seem to have a spine but also a creeping case of Stockholm Syndrome (or at least the career-preservation instincts to sound like he does), and his repulsive totalitarian antagonists, but what's the point? It all boils down to this:

Paglia: "So we have got to stop this idea that we must make life 'easy' for people in school … No. Maybe the world is harsh and cruel, and maybe the world of intellect is challenging and confrontational and uncomfortable. Maybe we have to deal with people who hate us, directly, face-to-face."

The Cry-Bullies: I shouldn't have to hear this! Fire her or we'll make your life miserable too!

Paul said...

Message to college student 'committees'. Go F*ck a duck.

Bob Boyd said...

That pop quiz was the last straw.

Anonymous said...

Nonapod: I've heard that neurological development in humans may continue until the age of 25. If so, perhaps we shouldn't give so much weight to the opinions of people under the age of 25 since their brains haven't finished forming?

Not to long ago it was widely believed that students went to college to learn from the professors, not to teach them. Quaint, I know.

TreeJoe said...

So just to recap:

1. Paglia said, "I question whether the transgender choice is genuine in every single case", EVERY SINGLE CASE, she is accused of degrading all transgender people.

2. Because Paglia says Universities (not Police) should not consider sexual assault allegations >6 months after the incident she is mocking survivors of sexual assault.

3. The solution to #1 and #2 is not just her removal but to replace her with someone on the LGBTQ spectrum who also has colored skin (but probably not asian).

...

Is this truly the state of modern academia and student body thinking?

Reminds me of Larry Summers who asked a mathematical/statistical question at Harvard about the differences in distribution of men and women's intelligence - as a function of deviation from mean and what that means for STEM - and was basically forced out for asking a serious academic question.

What happened to the left and speech? Not that many decades ago the liberal arm was about protecting speech - even harmful/hateful speech. Now it's common to say you can have an opinion until someone says it hurts them, and then it becomes hate speech. Intellectually ridiculous.

n.n said...

Paglia, Dershowitz et al are yesteryear's liberal, trending on the classical liberalism of American conservativism.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

So weird how formerly “Centrist” public figures are now labeled “right wing” by Progressives: Dershowitz, Bill Clinton, Paglia, Lieberman, etc.

In fact the pols whom can still be safely labeled Progressive are becoming (a la Spinal Tap) more “selective” every day as the definition of True Left shifts more leftward, stranding former allies for whom the description “right wing” now fits.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Freder - You cannot be serious.

Telling the Dixie Chicks to fuck off is not speech police. It's speech.

No one banned the Dixie Chicks. Do you understand the difference?


Banning someone - Like Paglia, for the crime of speaking her mind on a college campus (the place where ideas are supposed to be freely expressed and exchanged), is fascism. Leftwing fascism straight up.

Martin said...

They will come after Friedersdorf next, for defending Paglia. Not that he necessarily agrees with her on everything or anything, but he defended her on the principle of freedom of expression, and that will be enough to justify taking him out.

Little bitty Hitlers, they all are. This will get worse and worse until some adults enter the room and tell them to sit down and STFU, and if they don't like it they can leave by the door they entered through. Not clear where those adults might come from, though; they certainly will not be administrators with bullshit faux-degrees in "Educational Leadership."

buwaya said...

In response to Freder -

The people objecting to the Dixie Chicks did not and do not have control of your cursus honorum. Those of the masses who boycotted the Dixie Chicks and whomever else you mention are the led, not the leaders.

In your universities the dominance of ideology, and the death of mind, matters vastly more, as these institutions form your leadership caste.

Henry said...

They should replace Camille Paglia with a large stuffed animal.

Freder Frederson said...

The US has been skating along depending on the old-time intellectual habits of those who were formed in better days.

I would really like to know what buwaya considers the golden age of American intellectualism. I'm sure he longs for the days of Jim Crow when the society was completely dominated by White Anglo Saxon Protestants (who by the way didn't like Phillipinoes or Catholics much either), those who most of the commenters on this blog now deride as "Coastal Elites".

narayanan said...

chickelit said... Anti-Trump forces say as much:

Donald Trump should be removed from the Presidency and replaced by a queer person, preferably one of color.

contra Henry Ford - we would like to have any color except ORANGE

tim in vermont said...

The US has been skating along depending on the old-time intellectual habits of those who were formed in better days.

You mean that the kind of people who once read Moby Dick or War and Peace are being replaced by the kind of people who read Supergirl “graphic novels”?

John henry said...

Isn't Paglia "queer"?

I have problem keeping up wroth with the semantics. I know she is lesbian but does that make her queer?

And she could start identifying as black. That might work.

John Henry

Seeing Red said...

Via Insty:

Campus administrators are trying to calm down students after a week of outrage over DePaul University professor Jason Hill writing in The Federalist to support Israel’s right to create defensible borders and repel Islamist attempts at genocide.

“Jason Hill, you can’t hide, we know you want genocide!” shouted students throwing papers over bannisters during a protest last week. The protesting students demanded that the university formally censure Hill, require him to take “racial sensitivity training,” and him to publicly apologize for writing that Israel has a “moral right” to annex the West Bank because it is territory it won during a war initiated by enemies who believe Israel and Israelis should be wiped from the earth....

Freder Frederson said...

In your universities the dominance of ideology, and the death of mind, matters vastly more, as these institutions form your leadership caste.

Well if you are so worried about the dominance of ideology and the death of the mind, I don't know why the hell you want Camille Paglia anywhere near a university. Your definition of a intellectual is pretty damn narrow.

narayanan said...

Paul said... Message to college student 'committees'. Go F*ck a duck.

ah but can they qualify

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsYa11yonzI

tim in vermont said...

I'm sure he longs for the days of Jim Crow

Jim Crow was terrible, no doubt. But let’s replace it with a system that has led to atrocities like Stalin’s engineered famine in The Ukraine, Pol Pot’s “killing fields,” Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” or the ideology that turned Castro into a multi billionaire and his island into a prison.

buwaya said...

Your coastal elites used to be better people, and smarter.
And, indeed, better connected to the masses.

There was a thing then, middlebrow culture, that aspired to what they saw in the elite. Thats why you had mass market publications like "Readers Digest", and "National Geographic" and "Scientific American". These markets are nearly gone, and their remnants are vastly dumber.

The American intellectual golden age was probably in the 1940s-late 1970s.
Since then its been a long slow decline.

Seeing Red said...

You mean like blackballing the Dixie Chicks for objecting to the Iraq war? Or backlash against Willie Nelson, Charlie Robison or Hayes Carl for supporting Beto O'Rourke for Senate?

Are they at school?

Where free inquiry and an exchange of ideas is supposed to be sacrosanct?




tim in vermont said...

Your definition of a intellectual is pretty damn narrow.

Didn’t you just exclude Paglia? Isn’t that the very definition of “narrow”?

JPS said...

John Henry, 9:58:

"That might work."

Nothing short of recanting, abject begging of forgiveness, and self-exile will work.

For all the identity politics left objects when straight white males voice certain points of view, it really sends them ballistic when one of the traditionally oppressed disagrees with them. For one thing, it undermines their case that only straight white males would hold such points of view.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

So Freder - you agree with the banning of a person who has ideas you do not agree with?

Do You agree with the banning of Pagila?
Yes? You disagree with her, so she must be silenced? On a college campus? She doesn't adhere to the tenants of the leftwing RELIGION and radical leftist progressive RELIGIOUS line, so she must be silenced? Wow.

btw- Paglia is a classical liberal. It is amazing that a classical liberal is no longer considered valid in her speech in the new radical left wing fascist speech police mindset.

tim in vermont said...

You mean like blackballing the Dixie Chicks for objecting to the Iraq war?

Nobody “blackballed” the Dixie Chicks. They insulted their fans and the fans stopped buying their music. Same as my kids won’t use Uber because some guy on the board supported Trump. The Dixie Chicks problem is that they insulted the only people who liked to listen to their caterwauling. You could still get their records at the record store. Nobody fired them like these people are trying to shut down access to Paglia’s work.

n.n said...

... Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,”

Hutu-Tutsi climate of redistributive and retributive change. Mandela faction lynching competing blacks. Hamas jettisoning Fatah. Rabid diversity. One-child, selective-child, and recycled-child.. et cetera. We didn't start the progress ...

JPS said...

Freder:

In 2003, the Dixie Chicks posed naked on the cover of Entertainment Weekly to protest their silencing. In 2006 (I just learned, looking up how awful had been their McCarthyite blacklisting) they had a number 1 album and five Grammys.

That's it. It's done. With a heavy heart, I must renounce my citizenship and seek out a country more tolerant of dissent.

Swede said...

Life is going to kick these fucking pussies right in the teeth once they step off the campus for good.

I'm ok with that.

Anonymous said...

rhhardin: I bet a lot of the motive comes from blacks not being able to follow Paglia's intellectual work.

Blacks? Ha, "not being able to follow intellectual work" appears to be the common characteristic of every student bitching about "unsafe" speech, in every school.

Anonymous said...

Nobody at 946: Nietzsche did talk about the will to enslavement (by other words) in many places: it's almost the basis for his ideas about Christianity. And it's the flipside of his notions about power and superman, etc.

Buwaya is correct as to the depth and extent of the rot in HE. I spent my student and working life at my hometown ESU and believe me, the pot-smoking anti-war cohorts of the late 60s and early 70s were FAR better prepared and FAR less proud of their ignorance than entering students today. And the men--mostly men--that taught us were largely WWII vets or their little brothers, and lefty or not they still had notions of behavior and decorum that are downright quaint today.

Wasn't it Bloom who said the secret was telling your undergrads Nietzsche was wrong, telling your grad students he was right, and hoping nobody noticed?

Nietzsche, Ortega y Gasset, Pareto--look 'em up!

Narr
Bloom was a late bloomer

Ann Althouse said...

@Fernandistein

I saw that article about Crumb and declined to blog it because these complaints about Crumb have been around since the 1970s and were well aired in the 1992 documentary "Crumb." There's nothing new there at all. Maybe the youngest generation doesn't know the history of feminism and the feminist attack on Crumb. Maybe I need to put up a post to say that. I thought the article was very old news, too old to be bothered with.

tim in vermont said...

I won’t buy Gillette products anymore because I don’t consider my masculinity, or masculinity in general “toxic” but I don’t go down to the drug store and picket until they stop carrying the brand. Who has the time, for one thing?

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

@ Nobody

Jim Crow was terrible, no doubt. But let’s replace it with a system that has led to atrocities like Stalin’s engineered famine in The Ukraine, Pol Pot’s “killing fields,” Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” or the ideology that turned Castro into a multi billionaire and his island into a prison.

The collective left admire Castro and the gang. Jim Crow is a smoke screen for their cry-bully speech police work.

btw - After the Civil War, most white Southerners opposed Radical Reconstruction and the Republican Party's support of black civil and political rights. The Democratic Party identified itself as the "white man's party" and demonized the Republican Party as being "Negro dominated," even though whites were in control.

Not Sure said...

I'm sure he longs for the days of Jim Crow when the society was completely dominated by White Anglo Saxon Protestants

Oh hell, why stop there? I'll bet buwaya also likes Shakespeare, which must mean that he longs for the days of absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Nobody “blackballed” the Dixie Chicks. They insulted their fans and the fans stopped buying their music.

According to the radical leftist speech police, Dixie Chick fans should have been forced into buying all their albums henceforth. or - guards - seize them!

tim in vermont said...

Nietzsche talked about enduring slavery, efforts to maintain a shred of willful existence as a slave, not inviting it. One thing that a. slave was not denied was privation, so bring that on, but I will it so! Maybe I got that wrong.

JPS said...

Swede:

"Life is going to kick these fucking pussies right in the teeth once they step off the campus for good."

Unfortunately, I don't think so. Some, yes; for too many, their career path will be as described by James Lileks after the Yale Halloween costume brouhaha:

"The person will pass from the bubble of college to the bubble of social enforcement, keen on perfecting the world. And for the rest of his or her or xer professional life, they'll be shouting BE QUIET to a calm, rational adult who is too terrified to say 'you're a terrible child who understands nothing. Go to your room.'"

JPS said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Freder Frederson said...

Didn’t you just exclude Paglia? Isn’t that the very definition of “narrow”?

Have you ever read anything Paglia has written? She is nothing but a contrarian who enjoys pissing off those she considers narrow minded. Most of her musings are incredibly shallow.

She probably loves this controversy. And it wouldn't surprise me in the least if she actually fomented it.

Do You agree with the banning of Pagila?

I don't have an opinion about who should be on the faculty of an Arts University (which I am sure is just the type of institution buwaya despises as it probably doesn't even offer courses in Ancient Greek or Latin) that I didn't even know existed until Ann published this.

You disagree with her, so she must be silenced? On a college campus?

I never said this. All I said is that in buwaya's narrow definition of "intellectualism", I am surprised that he doesn't think that Paglia is contributing to the death of the American mind. As for being silenced, removing her from the faculty of this university is not going to silence her in the least, in fact it will probably have the opposite effect.

tim in vermont said...

The assumption is that the economy will power along as it always has once the underpinning assumptions and values are destroyed. It’s as if the trestle has termites and people expect that it will always support the train. Look at Venezuela.

tim in vermont said...

Most of her musings are incredibly shallow.

You disagree with her, therefore she doesn’t fit into your narrow definition of what it is to be an intellectual. How about you give us the nuanced take on transgenderism in women’s sports? Nobody’s stopping you. (I have to change that handle!)

Stephen Taylor said...

I would give my eye teeth to audit one of her classes. Don't agree with absolutely everything she says, but she has a brilliant mind and an elegant way of expressing herself. To show my support, I believe I'll buy a couple of her books; I encourage everyone else to buy one also. She makes you think.

Jersey Fled said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Michael K said...

She is nothing but a contrarian who enjoys pissing off those she considers narrow minded.

Like you, for example.

Freder, you are a constant fountain of humor.

gilbar said...

Of our readers here, how many have ever purchased a Dixie Chix album?

I have, their 2002 CD HOME (the Acoustic Bluegrass one). I liked it, and was eagerly awaiting their next release. After they insulted the President, the country, And me; i threw it away. I've never bought another, and i've never regretted it.

Anyone else? I'm curious

tim in vermont said...

Maybe Freder can explain to us how there is zero risk of a mistake being made in this whole transgenderism fad, reminiscent of the fad for frontal lobotomies. What is the nuanced argument that shows that any discussion of the headlong rush into diagnosing transgenderism in children whose brains are not fully formed should be forbidden?

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Freder-

Who is contributing to the death of the American mind, Freder? It's not Paglia. It is, in fact, the very intellectually bankrupt shallow thought-crimers who want to silence her.

Why so threatened by Paglia? Really - why are you and your fellow leftists so threatened by her? If you think she's an intellectual lightweight, why the need to silence her?

You want to silence her because she often shines a light on the left's hypocrisy. Truth is, Paglia INFURIATES the collective left, because she often does not fall in line with the collective.

buwaya said...

The effect of this stuff is to "educate" millions of academics and their administrators, or at any rate add a little extra bit of education, that anything Paglia-like is now professionally dangerous and should not be attempted. And, indeed, should be suppressed whenever it appears.

And the real danger here is not from the idiot, fanatical college students, but from the subculture/caste that controls your institutions (far beyond the academy), that has adopted these students whims as the standard to which their institutions must aspire.

Rick said...

School of Critical Studies, “blends creative practice and criticism,” aiming “to put artistic practices into dialogues with larger intellectual, cultural, and creative contexts” and to “develop and deepen students’ critical thinking skills, communication and research toolkits, and engagements with the history and criticism of creativity and its larger contexts.”

They should admit their failure and disband.

RK said...

We need to see the students pushing the petition. Good bet they're social outcasts who've tried purple hair, tattoos and piercings in order to be someone. This is just the next thing.

buwaya said...

As for Freder,

Greek and Latin, among other things, supplied an intellectual filter for the Liberal Arts. Its like the mathematics track that traditionally purges engineering students, the pounding on the forge that knocks off the slag.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Development of deep thought = submit to the collective.

Achilles said...

Freder Frederson said...

I never said this. All I said is that in buwaya's narrow definition of "intellectualism", I am surprised that he doesn't think that Paglia is contributing to the death of the American mind. As for being silenced, removing her from the faculty of this university is not going to silence her in the least, in fact it will probably have the opposite effect.

It is fun to watch leftists defend their fascist bullshit and simultaneously try to engage buwaya on any level.

The jig is up freder.

The liberals are going to leave the democrat party and the only thing left will be the progressives because they cannot coexist together.

And destroying womens sports with the transgender stuff is going to really backfire on the leftists.

stlcdr said...

Blogger Freder Frederson said...
If a student were treating a professor contemptuously, then that student would be summoned for a talk by the Dean of Students. There, the student would be warned to cease the misbehavior immediately. If the student continued to treat the professor contemptuously, then the Dean of Students would suspend or expel the student.

Well Gee! That is a rousing example of the protecting the free speech rights of students.

We need to see the end of these infantile mini-tyrannies.

You mean like blackballing the Dixie Chicks for objecting to the Iraq war? Or backlash against Willie Nelson, Charlie Robison or Hayes Carl for supporting Beto O'Rourke for Senate?

To pretend the left is the only group that doesn't always believe in the "public square" test of freedom is patently ridiculous.

5/1/19, 9:45 AM
You really are a complete twit, aren't you?

If you don't like coffee, do you (a) petition to shut down Starbucks or (b) not buy coffee from Starbucks.

Biff said...

Leland said...It's funny how long these people used terms like Homophobia and Transphobia, when nobody showed or expressed fear. Now they admit fear and claim someone dangerous. They should see someone for their phobia.

Great point. Too bad logical consistency has means nothing in the intersectional social justice follies.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Paglia is a female homosexual classical liberal. Not good enough on the victim scale.

Achilles said...

Freder Frederson said...
The US has been skating along depending on the old-time intellectual habits of those who were formed in better days.

I would really like to know what buwaya considers the golden age of American intellectualism. I'm sure he longs for the days of Jim Crow when the society was completely dominated by White Anglo Saxon Protestants (who by the way didn't like Phillipinoes or Catholics much either), those who most of the commenters on this blog now deride as "Coastal Elites".

Look at Freder the piece of shit build such a beautiful straw man.

You couldn't discuss any topic on the same level as Buwaya and it shows immediately.

Jim Crow is indistinguishable from affirmative action. Racism is racism. They were both created by the same people and for the same purpose - to destroy the social fabric of our country.

But the racist leftist shitheads like Freder know they don't have any real justification for their long history of racism past and present so they build attacks like this.

Darkisland said...

Blogger JPS said...

McCarthyite blacklisting

What does this mean?

What is a "McCarthyite blacklisting"

Who did McCarthy blacklist? Or get blacklisted?

John Henry

Darkisland said...

Blogger Not Sure said...

Oh hell, why stop there? I'll bet buwaya also likes Shakespeare, which must mean that he longs for the days of absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings.

Well, he has told us that he is proud to be a subject of the Spanish king.

Although not proud enough to actually live as a subject of the Spanish king, having lived, as an unassimilated guest, in the US for 30 years or so.

John Henry

Michael K said...

Greek and Latin, among other things, supplied an intellectual filter for the Liberal Arts

Latin, of course, was the common language of the educated. It was eventually replaced by French, then English.

It would be nice if something like Calculus was required for those who would rule.

Richard Feynman asked Herman Wouk if he knew calculus. Wouk admitted he did not.

Feynmann said he should learn it, "It is the language that God speaks" he said.

Rick said...

Life is going to kick these fucking pussies right in the teeth once they step off the campus for good.

The left understands this limitation which is why they are trying to export the campus authoritarian framework to the rest of society. We see it already implemented in media, education, and government. Tech is evolving into that as Google showed James Damore. Various "equity" agencies have been formed to "regulate" businesses into the same sorts of political activism we see on college.

The goal is to subject the private sector to the same political authoritarianism we see on campus. While the electoral benefits are obvious the left also needs to create jobs for activists and this forces the rest of us to pay for them either through taxes (government employees) or higher prices (diversity officers). There will be a neverending supply of these commissars since telling other people how to live is far easier than training yourself to be a positive contributor to society.

Roy Lofquist said...

"I even believe in the Devil." ~ Antonin Scalia

http://www.dennyburk.com/justice-scalia-believed-in-the-devil-and-was-offended-if-you-didnt/

Back in the bad old days, before the lion lay down with the lamb, when people were sent to the ovens, when mass murderers struck from the sky, we knew that there was evil in this world. Not misfortune, not accidents, not disease, not the bee's sting nor the dog's bite, but evil people, demonic people, Satan's spawn.

Guess what? They ain't gone away. These so-called "students" are evil. They are deceivers, saying whatever to try to sound human. I say take them out and shoot them. Humanely of course.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

The modern left are East Germans.

Bay Area Guy said...

The Left doesn't like hearing "stuff" with which they disagree.

The Left doesn't believe the First Amendment permits a person to articulate "stuff" with which they disagree.

The Left doesn't mind trying to fire people who articulate "stuff" with which they disagree.

The Left expands and contracts the definition of "stuff" with which they disagree depending on the political circumstance.

Trumpit said...

I remember disliking Paglia 20 years ago or more when she appeared on TV. She was an opinionated fast talker as I recall. When you slow her speech down, there isn't much real content there. She's just irritating in a smug way.

Darkisland said...

Blogger gilbar said...

Of our readers here, how many have ever purchased a Dixie Chix album?

I have one, though I forget which one, purchased when they first became popular, before the controversey.

I liked it OK but fairly quickly became bored with it and probably haven't listed to it for 20 years.

They just don't grab me like Beccy Cole, Elizabeth McQueen, Joan Baez, Van Morrison, Asleep at the Wheel or a host of other artists that I can listen to over and over and over again for many years. 50+ in the case of Joan Baez.

I probably don't agree with the politics of most of them, either. I just like their music.

A recommendation for our hostess: "Baez sings Dylan" a CD of about 12 Dylan songs by Baez at her peak.

John Henry

Clyde said...

The Red Guards have learned their lessons well.

buwaya said...

Rick is right.
And it has become ubiquitous.
As I said, this is your leadership caste being formed, learning their “religio, mores cultura”, as my old school motto went.
One does not have to be the one preaching the sermons to learn this.

Darkisland said...

Blogger stlcdr said...

If you don't like coffee, do you (a) petition to shut down Starbucks or (b) not buy coffee from Starbucks.

How does one buy coffee in Starbucks?

I seldom go into one but when I do get dragged in, I've never been able to get a cup of coffee.

All they seem to sell is overpriced coffee flavored beverages that are not actually coffee.

John Henry

Jack Klompus said...

The University of the Arts administration isn't stupid enough to alienate their star academic and Paglia doesn't suffer fools easily.


Freder said, "Have you ever read anything Paglia has written? She is nothing but a contrarian who enjoys pissing off those she considers narrow minded. Most of her musings are incredibly shallow."

You couldn't carry Paglia's jock if it had two handles on it, you dingbat. I would love to watch a one-dimensional dipshit like you go head to head with Paglia in the realm of knowledge and ideas. Her book Sexual Personae (which I guarantee you did NOT read) is a near thousand page tome expansion of her Yale PhD dissertation spanning almost the entire human history of art and literature. She has published 8 books of essays on art, poetry, film, and popular culture. What the fuck have you accomplished, you shallow pipsqueak?

buwaya said...

And John Henry is right.
I am a foreigner, here originally for largely mercenary reasons.
I really am a foreigner, the real deal, with a different heart.
Since then rather less mercenary, due to family, but that never went away.
It was a balance struck between heart and mind.
At this point we are at liberty to indulge the heart.

Viva Espana!

285exp said...

Freder:

"Well Gee! That is a rousing example of the protecting the free speech rights of students."

He's not talking about disciplining students because they disagree with the professors, he's talking about disciplining them for being contemptuous toward them. I don't see anything wrong with requiring them to behave in a civilized manner. When they start disciplining the students for saying things that they disagree with, they'll be as bad as the students who are demanding Ms Paglia's head.

Big Mike said...

Am I the only person here bothered by people that young having minds shut that tight?

Fernandinande said...

We need to see the students pushing the petition.

"I'm signing because I was a victim of an unprovoked attack by someone I knew."

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

If Paglia were on board with the modern corrupt left, the modern corrupt liar left would be on board with her.

Michael K said...

She's just irritating in a smug way.

I guess I would like her then.

James K said...

There's nothing quite like a bit of blue on blue action to generate Schadenfreude. Paglia, like Dershowitz, happens to be on the left but an honest and free thinker. That's not allowed any more.

tim in vermont said...

Feynmann said he should learn it, "It is the language that God speaks" he said

I could quibble with the idea that calculus is anything more than a very close approximation to the universe that “God sees” which is forever foreclosed to us, but Feynman has a point that it would be a good way to separate out those fit to participate in decisions.

I have a friend, a devout Democrat, who believes that they should put solar panels in the high arctic because the sun shines there for 24 hours in the summer. I tried to explain to him about the angle of incidence and how it affects solar insolation and that the power of approx 1000 watts per square meter that hits the Earth at the equator is attenuated over many more square meters on account of the fact that the sun is coming in sideways to no avail. He said “The electricity comes from light!”

Needless to say, his vote counts the same as yours or mine.

Darkisland said...

Ann has mentioned Tim Poole a couple of times here.

https://althouse.blogspot.com/2019/04/im-reading-meet-man-behind-trumps-biden.html

https://althouse.blogspot.com/2019/03/as-podcaster-51-year-old-rogan-is.html

He's the one who moderated the Rogan/Jack Dorsey Twitter censorship conversation.

She has talked about PewDiePie the other day and the subscribe meme.

In yesterday's Timcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=s3xr6jDulqk Tim talked about the meme and the problem.

Actually, he talked about how he CAN'T Talk about it because if he does, YouTube will at least derank him, at worst deplatform him entirely.

Tim has ongoing problems with YouTube censoring what he says. He tells us he really wanted to talk about the subscribe controversy and eventually did to some extent but it was very difficult. He claims that he could not even read newspaper articles about it without consequence.

Tim's podcasts are always interesting but this one is a must listen.

I've linked to a video but, like Scott Adam's Periscopes, there is not much visual going on. Best just to listen to it as a podcast on your phone. I subscribe through an app called Podcast Addict.

I keep thinking that YouTube needs some competition. They have one major competitor in a porn sharing site called PornHub.com Major in the sense that they seem pretty big.

Last year there was some talk of the NRA (? Or some other gun rights group) setting up a channel there, walled off from the porn. Seems like they have the hardware and expertise that they could set up a Freedom Video (or pick a better name) channel to compete with YouTube.

Vimeo does compete with YouTube. Gab and Mastodon compete with Twitter. I've not used Google for search in 20 years (I used to use Privatlee, now use Duck Duck Go and Bing)

There are alternatives. We have to silence these fascist assholes by using them.

Imagine what would happen if PDJT switched from Twitter to Mastodon or Gab.

John Henry

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

"Suppressing speech because it might indirectly cause danger depending on how people other than the speaker may react is an authoritarian move."

Yep. the modern collective thought-crime left are authoritarian dickheads.

cf said...

may the worm turn with a fabulous twirl!

May our ingenious, courageous Camille mark The Step Too Far, the pause that refreshes, where a good but misled peoples review & reflect. May they turn to examine their puney punkass Overseers and begin to explore truth anew.

Freder Frederson said...

Jim Crow was terrible, no doubt. But let’s replace it with a system that has led to atrocities like Stalin’s engineered famine in The Ukraine, Pol Pot’s “killing fields,” Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” or the ideology that turned Castro into a multi billionaire and his island into a prison.

You do realize that the Ukrainian famine happened at the peak of Jim Crow and the power of the KKK in this country? Not to mention that Marxism is rooted in the philosophy of what buwaya probably considers the height of Western Intellectualism.

Yancey Ward said...

Well, Friedersdorf needed to be making this defense long before now, and on behalf of people he to whom he wasn't naturally sympathetic. This right here is the problem with malleable principles- your opinion doesn't mean shit when you want it to.

LakeLevel said...

Camille should get a gig on Fox with those other apostates Horowitz and Williams. She was always too honest for this countries leftists.

Skippy Tisdale said...

I started reading Paglia about 25 years ago. That anyone would want her fired is absolutely insane (not hyperbole).

Mike Sylwester said...

285exp at 11:13 AM
He [Mike Sylwester] is not talking about disciplining students because they disagree with the professors, he's talking about disciplining them for being contemptuous toward them. I don't see anything wrong with requiring them to behave in a civilized manner. When they start disciplining the students for saying things that they disagree with, they'll be as bad as the students who are demanding Ms Paglia's head.

Well stated.

Michael The Magnificent said...

I have a dream that my four little chi1dren will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Except for that white devil, Camille Paglia. That bitch has got to go. -- Not Martin Luther King.

Sigivald said...

Heuristic: Almost all "student demands" are histrionic nonsense to be ignored at the instant of presentation.

Secondary: The unofficial response should also include mocking the students and their goals.

buwaya said...

"Jim Crow" is irrelevant to the quality of mind required to build a civilization.
Civilization can be imperfect, even cruel. All European classical civilization took place in slave societies with a degree of widespread cruelty that no part of American history can match.

This harping on "Jim Crow" is a silly bit of parochialism. A bit of madness really.
It dismisses the whole of your society and culture, as if it did not matter.
The creation of the United States as the leading economic, cultural, technological, military power on Earth, indeed the great conquest of the planet by the US, and moreover while providing an unprecedented degree of prosperity for its masses, beyond any ever in world history, besides providing a less-oppressive state than any ever before - this all matters not a bit apparently.

In truth you owe your predecessors an enormous debt. You are living off their patrimony, in many ways. Spending down your inheritance. But you can do nothing more than despise them.

This is one of those symptoms of general cultural depravity. It is almost universal now.

TJM said...

Awe, Camille hurt the little snowflakes feelings. Although a leftist, Camille has a great mind and is a pleasure to listen to. Maybe the little snowflakes should pack their bags and go home to mama. The US educational system has been ruined by Union Goonism/Liberals who have literally created a generation of perpetually offended, butt hurt libtards.

Rick said...

You do realize that the Ukrainian famine happened at the peak of Jim Crow and the power of the KKK in this country?

Luckily we have Freder here to keep us apprised of irrelevant facts.

TJM said...

Michael the Magnificent, any chance you are related to Obozo the Magnificent? From your comment it sounds like you could be.

Yancey Ward said...

Don't get me wrong- I think Paglia is a treasure to be cherished- I have been reading her for two decades now and don't think she writes nearly enough, but the Freiderdorf's of the world I hold in utter contempt.

buwaya said...

I note in the article comments about "Sexual Personae" being compared to "Mein Kampf", back in 1992.

“During meetings with the committee, professors denounced the work as ‘trash’ and compared it to Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf,’” the Hartford Courant reported.

This is idiotic on one level. Or simply mad.

On another, I think any thoughtful person should read "Mein Kampf", the first three chapters or so anyway. Any intellectually curious person should.

Michael K said...

In truth you owe your predecessors an enormous debt. You are living off their patrimony, in many ways. Spending down your inheritance. But you can do nothing more than despise them.

Yes but the college generation now knows no history. Antonio Gramsci has been very successful.

Yancey Ward said...

"On another, I think any thoughtful person should read "Mein Kampf", the first three chapters or so anyway. Any intellectually curious person should."

I am just old enough (52) to have had this book as assigned reading in a history course in college.

Yancey Ward said...

Looks like Readering's hope is dead again. Barr just too much for the Democrats- a battle of the wits versus the witless.

Jack Klompus said...

"Luckily we have Freder here to keep us apprised of irrelevant facts."

But remember, he's declared Paglia's "musings" to be "shallow."

"“During meetings with the committee, professors denounced the work as ‘trash’ and compared it to Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf,’” the Hartford Courant reported."

Of course they did. Most of them probably possess a mere fraction of Paglia's knowledge and have spent their careers social climbing in some niche po-mo specialty where repeatedly citing Judith Butler and Michel Foucault is considered erudite scholarship. She never had any problem calling out the bullshit artists by name and they've despised her since she began revealing the nudity of the king.

Michael The Magnificent said...

TJM said...

It's satire. I was pointing out how today's leftists do not agree with Martin Luther King's dream of a color-blind society.

Achilles said...

Yancey Ward said...
Looks like Readering's hope is dead again. Barr just too much for the Democrats- a battle of the wits versus the witless.

The videos being posted are priceless. Barr is openly laughing at the Democrat Senators. Whitehouse is a fucking moron and Barr just humiliated him.

Jerry Nadler just voted to have staffers question Barr in the House committee because he knows the elected democrats on the committee are too fucking stupid to do it.

Jack Klompus said...

"I am just old enough (52) to have had this book as assigned reading in a history course in college."

Thomas Childers (another actual, genuine, prolific scholar) assigned chapters from Mein Kampf as a necessary evil for his History of the Third Reich undergrad course at Penn. He always apologized for forcing his students to read "possibly the worst book ever written and not just for the ideas it contains."

tim in vermont said...

Marxism is rooted in the philosophy of what buwaya probably considers the height of Western Intellectualism.

I don’t blame the first people who tried the idea, but at some point the repeated failures of this kind of Marxism should be clear to anybody who has even a cursory knowledge of history. This whole “you show me the man, I will show you the crime” hounding of Trump should give any thinking person pause.

I am not sure which Greek said it, but it is still true millennia later. “A man who does not know what has happened in the past is like a child.” And here we are letting actual children dictate to us.

tim in vermont said...

"possibly the worst book ever written and not just for the ideas it contains."

Wait a minute! I thought that was Atlas Shrugged!

Achilles said...

buwaya said...

"Jim Crow" is irrelevant to the quality of mind required to build a civilization.
Civilization can be imperfect, even cruel. All European classical civilization took place in slave societies with a degree of widespread cruelty that no part of American history can match.


But it is important in that it encapsulates the thinking of the left in this country. They spawned the policy because it was contrary to the founding of our republic. After they spawned it they use it to tear down the foundations of the republic. They are always acting contrary to the founding principles of our republic.

This harping on "Jim Crow" is a silly bit of parochialism. A bit of madness really.
It dismisses the whole of your society and culture, as if it did not matter.
The creation of the United States as the leading economic, cultural, technological, military power on Earth, indeed the great conquest of the planet by the US, and moreover while providing an unprecedented degree of prosperity for its masses, beyond any ever in world history, besides providing a less-oppressive state than any ever before - this all matters not a bit apparently.


It is just an effort to get their serfs back.

In truth you owe your predecessors an enormous debt. You are living off their patrimony, in many ways. Spending down your inheritance. But you can do nothing more than despise them.

This is one of those symptoms of general cultural depravity. It is almost universal now.


It has never been different. The struggle between the aristocracy and the citizen is the defining characteristic of the history of the United States. The very founding of our country upended centuries of the lord and serf paradigm and created a society based on the free citizen.

We are more free today than we were 50 years ago. Remember our political culture before President Trump was dominated by the globalists. But now even the democrat party is fighting against their masters.

Pretty soon a big batch of them are going to be indicted and the fun really starts.

The EU is falling. Venezuela has no friends in South America. Cuba and Russia are losing ground. China is being cut down to size.

It takes no special effort. All you have to do is remove the chains of the aristocracy from the people of the United States and we resume leadership of the world.

This shit is all going the right direction.

Yancey Ward said...

"but at some point the repeated failures of this kind of Marxism should be clear to anybody who has even a cursory knowledge of history."

I think the real problem is that the people are missing the fact that Marxism wasn't a failure to everyone involved. Not every, or even most, Marxist's goal is the betterment of the human condition- no, the motives are far more base and self-serving than that.

stlcdr said...

Blogger Big Mike said...
Am I the only person here bothered by people that young having minds shut that tight?

5/1/19, 11:16 AM


No, you aren’t. There was a time when students went to school and college to learn something. Now, it seems it’s simply a place to reaffirm whatever they believe, and if it doesn’t it must be changed.

Jack Klompus said...

"Wait a minute! I thought that was Atlas Shrugged!"

Officer Barbrady would concur!

buwaya said...

"He always apologized for forcing his students to read "possibly the worst book ever written and not just for the ideas it contains.""

Childers had not read widely enough, the poor naive fellow.
Obviously he had never had to read anything like my MBA program taxation textbook.

Michael K said...

There was a time when students went to school and college to learn something. Now, it seems it’s simply a place to reaffirm whatever they believe, and if it doesn’t it must be changed.

This is why I am encouraging my son to send his son into the Marine Corps when he finishes high school. He can grow up a bit and learn a bit about the world. Unless he is planning a STEM or Accounting major, college is basically useless.

Plus, of course, the GI Bill will pay.

Jack Klompus said...

Childers had not read widely enough, the poor naive fellow.
Obviously he had never had to read anything like my MBA program taxation textbook.

I disagreed with him having read A Confederacy of Dunces and The Secret History, two of the most loathsome books I've ever suffered through. I know a lot of people think CoD is a comic masterpiece, but I think Ignatius Reilly is the most hate-inducing, repulsive character in literature.

Jack Klompus said...

Oh and buwaya if you want a real page turner to rival a tax textbook, strap yourself in for the wild ride of an organic chemistry textbook.

Francisco D said...

Freder said, "Have you ever read anything Paglia has written? She is nothing but a contrarian who enjoys pissing off those she considers narrow minded. Most of her musings are incredibly shallow."

This is an excellent example of Freder's tendency towards projection.

His contrarian comments tend to be shallow attempts at pissing people off on this site.

That said, I prefer dealing with him, Cookie and r/v than idiots like Inga, Trumpit, Ritmo and Victoria. At least the former try to think.

As to Paglia, I find her amusing because she represents the modern professional intellectual. Her opinions aside, I can see why some find her annoying.

tim in vermont said...

It’s not the kids showing up with the ideas, it’s Marxist professors planting these ideas in the kids heads and using them as cannon fodder in their “long march.” Do you think these kids have read Paglia? But you can be sure her fellow profs have and they loathe her celebrity status.

tim in vermont said...

Trumpit is funny. I give him/her credit for that. Also, he represents the first real evisceration of Kant’s morality that I have seen. Nietzsche notwithstanding.

Thus, at the heart of Kant’s moral philosophy is a conception of reason whose reach in practical affairs goes well beyond that of a Humean ‘slave’ to the passions. Moreover, it is the presence of this self-governing reason in each person that Kant thought offered decisive grounds for viewing each as possessed of equal worth and deserving of equal respect.. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/

Strumpit extends this worth to dumb animals, and why stop there? What about plants? Should we enslave maize? But what Strumpet shows is that Kant wasn’t really cooking up some fundamental logical law with his CI, he was just describing human behavior at the time, which is changeable.

Philosophers are like the proverbial crabs in a bucket, every time one of them tries to crawl out by stealing a base on Hume, another philosopher grabs him by the leg and drags him back down in their own vain attempt to escape.

Hey Skipper said...

@freder: Have you ever read anything Paglia has written? She is nothing but a contrarian who enjoys pissing off those she considers narrow minded. Most of her musings are incredibly shallow.

Jack Klompus responded far better than I ever could.

I have read several of her books. She is someone with whom I am disinclined to agree. She made me think.

Completely unlike you.

MikeD said...

And, here's the end result of all these woke fascists: "Many college grads feel their grip on middle class loosening" https://www.theeagle.com/news/politics/many-college-grads-feel-their-grip-on-middle-class-loosening/article_489f0e5a-2bbb-5a4f-a07f-626821f2247c.html

Jack Klompus said...

If you ever get a chance to hear Paglia speak in person, don't miss it. Her lectures are wildly entertaining. She can rapid-fire references to high, middle, and pop culture and tie them together seamlessly. She's an accessible public intellectual who head popular appeal and isn't afraid to throw in her opinions with a lever of sass and wit that of course will leave you befuddled and often in disagreement, but she always makes you think. You never leave a talk with her without a whole new reading list. If she's signing a book she will sign everything of hers you bring and talk to you very warmly and graciously. She's an incredibly nice person. Having her locally is one of the few gems of being stuck living in a craphole like Philadelphia.

Krumhorn said...

This all goes back to what I think is your greatest problem, the death of the American mind. Your higher education is in a disastrous state, your intellectial class is completely depraved. Dismiss this all you like, but my opinion is that this disease will be fatal. And I don't see even a hint of an effort to control it, much less reverse it.

As usual, buwaya cuts to the heart of the matter. The faculty lounge in the academy of arts and sciences is a fetid leftie swamp in the wake of the Gramscian March Through the Institutions that has produced the very cultural hegemony of which Fedor is so clearly a product. As Paglia says, this is a problem of the coddled bourgeoisie who accept no responsibility for their own decisions and conduct and who insist on the right to have their views respected, honored, and protected from a discouraging word. A safe space.

That is why their university written briefs in my business law classes always start with some version of “I think”, “I feel”, or “I believe”. They don’t take it well when I tell them that their views are entirely irrelevant to the exercise. However, I am required to preface my statement with a trigger warning so that they know it will soon be time to faint and to find a landing spot on the classroom floor.

- Krumhorn

Bilwick said...

As Instapundit likes to point out, these are Heinlein's Crazy Years.

tim in vermont said...

I guess Kant remains standing and in stronger position after all because the reason that these dumb animals have value is because Trumpit, to whom we give the benefit of the doubt that he has the ability to reason, unlike the animals, values them.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

The collective left do not want to "think" or consider - they want to conform, lockstep, like good little hivemidners.

Murph said...

I just want to add that one of the primary reasons that I slog through these threads is to read Buwaya's comments. He always presents his opinions calmly, precisely, and with an interesting perspective.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

. I know a lot of people think CoD is a comic masterpiece, but I think Ignatius Reilly is the most hate-inducing, repulsive character in literature.

5/1/19, 12:48 PM

Agreed! I really hated "Confederacy of Dunces" too, for the same reasons.

Freder is even more of a sour dullard today than usual. I note the usual SJW ploy of pretending that criticism or voluntarily deciding not to purchase a product (like the Dixie Chicks music) is the same as trying to get Paglia fired.

Paglia's toenail clippings are worth more than Freder.

And yes, buwaya makes great sense, although his wisdom is lost on sour, parochial mediocrities who can do nothing but squawk "slavery! Jim Crow!" like demented parrots.

Steven said...

The correct answer to a list of demands from Red Guards is a spray of 5.56 NATO in their direction.

Freder Frederson said...

This is why I am encouraging my son to send his son into the Marine Corps when he finishes high school. He can grow up a bit and learn a bit about the world.

Oh yeah, being junior enlisted in the military, especially the Marines, encourages all kinds of independent thinking.

The very founding of our country upended centuries of the lord and serf paradigm and created a society based on the free citizen.

That's a pretty rose colored glass view of the founding of our country especially considering that 60% of the South (and 25% of the entire population) was enslaved. Also, the following one hundred years was spent continuing the genocide of the native population.

Yes but the college generation now knows no history.

Yeah, this leads to Dick'n Bimbos (I noticed the name change) believing Jim Crow ended sometime before 1932.

Michael K said...

being junior enlisted in the military, especially the Marines, encourages all kinds of independent thinking.

Field Marshall Freder is favoring us with his extensive experience in the military. Thank you o great mind.

When I was doing Utilization Review on workers comp cases, we hired a new IT guy. He had gotten a comp sci degree at UC San Diego while serving as an EM in the Marine Corps. Try to remember how to pronounce that Freder.

We couldn't keep him because we could not afford to pay him what he was being offered by others,.

DavidD said...

A queer person of color.

Forget looking at ability.

We need more queer persons of color(s).

In fact, let’s all just quit our jobs and leave them for the queer persons of color(s).

“Get woke. Go broke.” It’s not just an expression—it’s a law.

Freder Frederson said...

He had gotten a comp sci degree at UC San Diego while serving as an EM in the Marine Corps.

I don't know what your point is supposed to be here. Good for him for earning a degree while a full time Marine (unless you are bullshitting as usual and he earned his degree while in the Reserves). His accomplishments have nothing to do with whether the Marines encourage independent thought among junior enlisted.

Freder Frederson said...

Field Marshall Freder is favoring us with his extensive experience in the military.

And do tell us about your extensive experience in the military.

Freder Frederson said...

As far as I know the only reason you went to medical school was to keep your ass out of Vietnam.

ccscientist said...

When only 10% went to college and only a few % to the top schools, they could be selective. Now that colleges have decided to admit everyone and 50% go, there is no way to be selective. Add ideology on top of that and you get a mess.

Freder Frederson said...

Oh no! Michael K is going to mock me now. I said "full time", not "active duty"

Michael K said...

As far as I know the only reason you went to medical school was to keep your ass out of Vietnam.

You are such a pitiful Example of a clueless leftist.

I was in the Air Force and the Army Reserve and before Vietnam was aggravated by Johnson. That is before 1968.

My partners in Practice were both prior service also. One was AF and the other was a Marine.

Now go away and shut up. There are adults around.

Michael K said...

His accomplishments have nothing to do with whether the Marines encourage independent thought among junior enlisted.<

Last time I respond to the fool. How would you know?

Paco Wové said...

"I'm sure he longs for the days of Jim Crow when the society was completely dominated by White Anglo Saxon Protestants"

Do you actually consider that any sort of apposite response? You're essentially abandoning the field, attempting to hide your retreat behind a flurry of ad hominems and straw men. You're an even bigger tool than I thought, Freder. When was your golden age?

Unknown said...

Why don't they just attend a different school?

go to a school with matching ideological purity.

colleges have become corrupted with govt cash and govt backed loans.

When the Sander's pipers pay for "Free college", then they will call the tune.

Colleges need to hire adults who can say "no".

Wise kids should refuse to spend time and money on this nonsense.

Fen said...

Freder: Oh yeah, being junior enlisted in the military, especially the Marines, encourages all kinds of independent thinking

Are you trying to be sarcastic?

NCOs are the backbone of the Marine Corps. It is known.

No doubt, like a typical leftie, you swallowed whatever stereotypes Hollywood fed you. And then you have the gall to lecture others about "indepedent thinking"?

LOL

DeepRunner said...

Snowflakes are like everyone else: They're all for freedom of speech until it's speech they disagree with. Difference is, they would remove the right to free speech while spewing bilge themselves.

Jack Klompus said...

Oh no! Michael K is going to mock me now. I said "full time", not "active duty"

No, he mocked AND completely owned you, you inane tool.

Freder Frederson said...

NCOs are the backbone of the Marine Corps. It is known.

Where did I say anything about NCOs? And if you interpreted my post as meant to insult to junior enlisted, then you completely misread it. was in the Air Force and

I was in the Air Force and Army Reserve and before Vietnam was aggravated by Johnson. That is before 1968.

First off, your history stinks (or more likely, you have convinced yourself that I know nothing about military history and you figured you could get away with fudging dates). Escalation started in '64 (with the fake Gulf of Tonkin incident) with peak troop levels reached in '68. I don't think you are much older than 70, so giving you a couple years of leeway meant you turned 18 sometime after '65. So, I think that by hook or crook you got yourself into the Reserves knowing that would allow you to support the war and punch hippies without putting yourself at personal risk. If war is so glorious, why didn't you request active duty?

Last time I respond to the fool. How would you know?

You can't quit me any more than I can quit you. It is a sick obsession. I am the one who shouldn't respond to you. You have accused me of much more vile things than I have ever hurled at you.